http://www.jewishworldreview.com --
SOME people will do anything to get their hands on federal wampum.
Across the country, scam artists claiming to be oppressed "indigenous
peoples" have used dubious family histories, altered documents, or shady
land claims to win government recognition as Indian tribes.

Now, there's a new group that wants in on all the special rights, free
benefits, and racial preferences that accompany sovereign tribal status:
Native Hawaiians.

This week, the Democrat-controlled Senate Indian Affairs Committee
approved a bill to give Native Hawaiians the right to create their own
"governing entity" that would negotiate lucrative land deals with the
U.S. - just as many cash-hungry, casino-owning Indian tribes do.

The bill, sponsored by Sen. Daniel Akaka (D-Hawaii), would set up a
Native Hawaiian fiefdom in Washington similar to the Bureau of Indian
Affairs. A "United States Office for Native Hawaiian Relations" would
direct federal policy. To enforce this racial separatism bureaucracy, a
"Native Hawaiian Interagency Coordinating Group" would oversee a
plethora of public health, welfare, and education programs for Native
Hawaiians only.

What is a "Native Hawaiian" anyway? It's not a Filipino-American whose
family has lived in Maui for three generations. Or a Japanese-American
whose family migrated to Honolulu before World War II. Or a white
American from Kealakekua Bay whose ancestors include 18th-century
explorer James Cook. Natives of Hawaii are defined not by state
citizenship and residency, but by blood relation to the islands'
original Polynesian inhabitants.

Local government forms ask residents of the Aloha State to calculate and
document the amount of Native Hawaiian blood they and their children
possess. Those with the proper "blood quantum" receive special housing
privileges, employment consideration, retail discounts, and exclusive
schooling. The "right" kind of Hawaiians proudly carry racial passports
that recall apartheid South Africa, Nazi Germany, and the antebellum
South. Under Sen. Akaka's bill, members of the bogus Native Hawaiian
"tribe" would be allowed to create a race-based voting registry of
citizens and to investigate individuals' backgrounds to verify their
blood purity.

Giving Native Hawaiians Indian tribal-like status and immunity from
federal civil rights laws is historically absurd and legally
treacherous. At no time in their history have Native Hawaiians
organized, acted, or existed as a tribe. When the U.S. annexed Hawaii,
all of its citizens - native and non-native -- became Americans. Unlike
legitimate Indian tribes that retained quasi-sovereign powers after
ceding their lands to the U.S., no group of Native Hawaiians ever
established a treaty right to self-governance and exemption from our
federal Constitution.

Only last year did a legal challenge to one of Hawaii's patently
unconstitutional race-based programs finally reach the U.S. Supreme
Court. In Rice v. Cayetano, the high court struck down the state's
Hawaiian-only restriction for voting in elections for a state agency
that administers hundreds of millions of dollars earmarked exclusively
for natives. The court ruled that the racial restriction clearly
violated the Fifteenth Amendment and noted that "it demeans the dignity
and worth of a person to be judged by ancestry instead of by his or her
own merit and essential qualities."

But the restless natives in Hawaii are not about to let the U.S.
Constitution get in the way of their racial spoils racket. Sen. Akaka's
bill is on its way to the Senate floor. And though it would perpetuate
the same illegal race-based voting scheme just nullified by the Supreme
Court, the legislation's prospects of passing are considerably greater
than a snowball's chance in a flaming luau pit. Hawaii Republicans (an
endangered species) refuse to oppose the bill publicly; timid Republican
leaders in Washington (an overabundant species) don't have the stomach
to challenge these zealous minority Balkanizers.

Moreover, the full Senate has already approved $35 million for Native
Hawaiian-only education programs, including money for construction of
Native Hawaiian-only public schools, and there is unquestioning
bipartisan support for reauthorizing several Native Hawaiian-only health
programs.

If the Akaka bill becomes law, you can bet that every other aggreived
racial and ethnic group will be running to claim tribal-like
"sovereignty" and cash in on their manufactured status as separate
foreign governments.